AbbVie Inc. (ABBV:US)’s AIDS drug Kaletra cleared pre-cancerous cervical lesions from 90 percent of patients in a study in Kenya that may lead to the first non-surgical treatment to prevent a disease that kills a woman every two minutes. Among 40 women with pre-cancerous lesions caused by the human papillomavirus, the drug cleared cells infected with the virus in 36 women after two weeks of treatment, the University of Manchester, England said in a statement today. The findings, if confirmed by a larger trial now being planned, may change the treatment of the disease for women in poor nations who often have to wait for surgery, and for those in wealthy nations who are diagnosed with early-stage lesions and told to “watch and wait” to see whether the disease progresses, said Lynne Hampson, a lecturer in viral oncology at the university who led the study with her husband Ian Hampson.